​Our latest release, "The Future Ain't What It Used To Be", is The 14 Jazz Orchestra's 2nd recording. Due to significant budget restraints, the recording process for this project required a rather unique approach, only made possible by the extreme generosity of our band members, guests artists, studios, and engineers.It was always my intention to work with players that came out of the program at the University of Miami, where I had been a student and later a member of the Studio Music and Jazz faculty. It's presented us with a "like-minded" approach to the music. The members of the orchestra represent 7 decades of former students, graduates, and/or faculty members from as early as the very late 1950's to the present. Even the guest artists have a U of M background, with Randy Brecker as the only exception. Several of us have performed and/or recorded with Randy going as far back as 1977.After several concerts in 2016 and 2017 to test out some of our new material, we began by recording 8 of the rhythm section tracks at Red Rock Studios in Miami, with engineer Frank Miret. The studio has 4 isolation rooms plus the control room, which is also used to record the grand piano. We isolated the drums, bass, and guitar in 3 of the rooms and recorded them along with the piano in 3 separate recording sessions. For the most part, the guitar and piano solos were done live during those sessions. The players had to rely heavily on the written parts as well as their recollections of the arrangements since the horn parts were to be added later. This presented significant challenges for Tom, Jim, Matt, and Jack, especially in those places where ensemble parts needed drum accents and where future solos required each of them to anticipate/imagine how to accompany soloists who'd be recording their solos at a later session.We went back to work with Frank at Red Rock Studios and in 2 sessions we overdubbed all the horns parts on Ruth, Dance Cadaverous, 16 Tons (Give or Take), and Triste. Mark Colby subbed for my brother Neal on the 1st session (Ruth, Dance, and 16 Tons) as did Jack Wengrosky for Cisco Dimas on the 2nd Trumpet part. Neal was back for the 2nd session when we recorded Triste and Jack came back to sub for Steve Reid on lead Trumpet. Recording the horns in 3 separate rooms was very challenging for the players and the engineer. Our smaller instrumentation demands mixing instruments from different sections of the orchestra throughout the arrangements. Getting the right headphone balances, so the players could hear one another in separated rooms, was extremely difficult.Not long after we completed the 5 sessions at Red Rock, I contacted Mike Levine, who has been a friend and colleague for many decades. As a great keyboardist, composer, recording engineer, producer, and recording artist, I valued Mike's input and was hoping he'd agree to work on the project with us. To our great fortune, he agreed to do the editing, some additional recording, and also mix the project when it was completed. Most of the project was still ahead of us. We had 3 more rhythm tracks to complete, most of the solos to overdub, and 7 more tracks that still needed all the horns parts to be recorded!Perhaps the most significant aspect of the recording came when Ed Calle, Ed Maina, and Peter Brewer volunteered to record all their parts in their home studios. Ed Maina also recorded the vast majority of the other horn parts at his home as well, drastically reducing the overall production costs. Each transferred their digital files to Mike Levine when they completed their parts. Mike put them all together with the other parts we recorded at his studio, and made some repairs and edits as needed. Their generosity absolutely made the project possible.As we gradually assembled all the pieces, we made plans to complete the rest of the rhythm section parts, add the overdubbed solos, as well as all the guest artists' parts. Perhaps the most unorthodox approach of all the tracks we recorded was on Pandamandium. Mile Levine took the playback sound track from the Sibelius software I use to write the arrangements, placed all the simulated parts on one track, and emailed the files along with a written drum part to drummer, Lee Levin. Lee recorded his drum part and emailed the recording back to Mike. Within a few days guest bassist, Tim Smith, recorded the bass part at Lee's home studio. From there we gradually recorded the guitar and keyboard, and all the horn parts separately. Once all the parts were completed, Mike made a rough mix and emailed the files to Randy Brecker to add his parts and solos. After several discussions with Mike Levine and Ed Calle, I asked Ed to add tenor sax fills in several places to give the recording some more intensity. Richard Bravo added the final touches on percussion.Associate Producer, Michael Hurzon, provided his guidance on both ends of the project. Mike Hurzon and I met back in 2003 when he was Co-Producing the 1st Jaco Pastorius Big Band Recording and he's been my production mentor ever since, handling the radio promotion for both our debut album and current release. As an example, Mike assisted me with the album conception as I selected the compositions and guest artists, gave me some very helpful input on the new release title and album jacket, and structured the tune sequence.

Dan Bonsanti​

THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BEPROJECT NOTES PT. 2 - THE TRACKS

​Chick Corea's compositions and recordings have always been among my favorites. I wanted to find one of Chick's tunes that had not been "overly" recorded and arrange it in a way that represented the Latin influences of South Florida. Armando's Rhumba fit the description perfectly. It was my goal to create an energetic, powerful interpretation while still retaining some of the composition's small ensemble acoustic magic, displayed in the original recording. It became very clear that the tune could provide a nice setting to feature Ed Maina on Piccolo, Ed Calle on Soprano Sax, and our guest drummer, Lee Levin. Richard Bravo put the "icing on the cake" with the addition of his Latin Percussion. This track was essentially recorded one instrument at a time including the over-dubbed piccolo, soprano sax, and piano solos. As we approach the radio release date, this tune has been the overwhelming favorite track streamed on Spotify and Apple Music. It will be fun to see if the radio DJ's react the same way.

Herbie Hancock's album, "The Prisoner", has been a longtime favorite of mine and contains a wealth of creative compositions, colorful orchestrations, and masterful performances. Buster William's, Firewater, stood out as a composition that could be expanded to a larger instrumentation without losing some of the compositions delicate characteristics. With a great cast of woodwind doublers in the 14JO reed section, I felt we had the ingredients to give it a re-interpretation. The track was recorded in separate studio sessions, with the full horn sections overdubbing their parts collectively at Red Rock Studios. Each of the solos were overdubbed at Mike Levine's Downtimes Studio. It was great to be able to include my very good friend, tenor saxophonist Mark Colby, on a solo track, who flew in from Chicago to sub for my bother Neal on the 1st horn session.

The piano solo on Blue Miles and the full Rhythm section track was recorded at Red Rock Studios while the horns were completed individually at Ed Maina's and Mike Levine's studio. To make the track more attractive for radio play, I made the decision to edit it down to about 5 minutes in length. This meant taking out one chorus of the piano solo, eliminating Tom's guitar solo, and reducing the number of other soloists that I had originally planned to include. We also made some edits on solo backgrounds that we felt conflicted with and distracted from the solos. Both of the sax solos were overdubbed at their home studios.

Triste is a very special part of our project. Bob Meyer's arrangement was written in the late 1960's for the Miami based, 13 piece jazz ensemble known as "The Baker's Dozen". That ensemble featured IRA Sullivan and was directed by pianist Vince Maggio. The ensemble was comprised of some of Miami's most accomplished jazz and studio players of that era and attracted composers and arrangers like Ron Miller and Bob Meyer. All the parts and the score to the arrangement had been lost. The only known recording was a cassette I made with a portable cassette machine, of a The Baker's Dozen performance, done for a local NPR television broadcast in 1970, by holding a portable recorder in front of the television speaker. I spent several months transcribing all the parts from the recording and then re-orchestrating it to fit our instrumentation. Along with "Firewater", "Ruth", and "16 Tons (Give or Take)", "Triste" was first recorded with the rhythm section and we later, collectively, overdubbed all the horns. The solos were also overdubbed at a later date while Jim Gasior made a 2nd take on his piano solo at the group session. It was our very good fortune that Rick Margitza happened to be visiting Miami and was willing to overdub a solo at Downtimes Studios on "Triste" as well as being the featured soloist on "I'll Be Seeing You". We dedicated this track to Bob Meyer, whose musical contributions for decades to the South Florida music scene were immeasurable.

Dance Cadaverous is a Wayne Shorter composition that I have long admired and was the first arrangement I completed for the project. This recording was among the 4 tracks where the rhythm section was recorded collectively at Red Rock Studios, but each of the horns parts were overdubbed individually. Once again Jim Gasior's piano solo was recorded live while Dante's trombone solo was overdubbed much later at Mike's studio. I attempted to capture the compositions somewhat dark and exotic characteristics by combining muted brass and woodwinds.

I first heard Pandamandium in the 1980's while performing with Peter Graves' Atlantean Driftwood Band at The Sanibel Jazz Festival on Sanibel Island, FL. Eliane Elias and Randy Brecker were guest artists that year and Eliane was pregnant with their daughter, Amanda at the time (for whom the tune is cleverly titled). They performed the piece with just our rhythm section. After the concert, there was talk that Michael Brecker might join them as guests the following year. I told Eliane how much I liked the tune and that I would like to arrange it for the The Atlantean Driftwood Band to play with them, so she generously provided me with a lead sheet. Unfortunately, their return to the Festival with Michael Brecker didn't materialize. We read down the chart, but never performed it. I later expanded the instrumentation to a full big band and gave it to my University of Miami colleague, Whit Sidener, who conducted the UM Concert Jazz Band. They recorded an amazing performance of it at Criteria Studios in Miami. Many years later, after we formed the 14 Jazz Orchestra, I mentioned to Randy Brecker my desire to re-record it in the original format with The 14. Randy had heard the UM track and offered to record it with us if we did a 2nd project. About halfway through our new project I brought our main engineer, Mike Levine, an MP3 of the sound track, created from the new score I had completed on my Sibelius software. He sent that track with a drum part to Lee Levin and Lee laid down the first track. Only a few days later, bassist, Tim Smith, recorded his part at Lee's home studio and all the rest of the ensemble and solo tracks were recorded one player at a time.

I came across 16 Tons one day as I was scanning through channels on cable TV. The 1960's hit recording by Tennessee Ernie Ford happened to be playing on an infomercial show and caught my attention. After streaming it many times, I thought of some ways the tune could work in a jazz-like setting if I could expand it's very simple form {thus, 16 Tons (Give or Take)} . I added a bridge (middle section) and utilized march and stop-time feels to add a slight Art Blakey/Jazz Messengers touch. While experimenting with "16 Tons", I was completing an 8 minute Mancini Movie Theme project for a community choir concert, consisting of 50 voices, a female vocal soloist, and a 3 piece rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums), so I was doing a great deal of listening to Henry Mancini's music. Mancini's orchestrations were a definite influence, especially in the solo backgrounds to the Trumpet and Baritone sax solos. This is another track where we recorded the rhythm section 1st and later overdubbed all the horn parts and the 2 horn solos individually. Tom recorded his Guitar solo live at the session.

Seventh Sign was written by one of the band's favorite composers, Ron Miller. Ron and I were fellow faculty members during my 15 years in the Studio Music and Jazz program at The University of Miami and performed and recorded together during those years. "Seventh Sign's" first large ensemble arrangements were done by Ron himself and his approach and melodic content, form the basis of this chart, which is mostly a re-orchestration to feature Ed Calle on Soprano Sax. As students bassist, Mark Egan, and drummer Danny Gottlieb were among the first musicians to perform Ron’s music so I thought of them right away as potential contributors, knowing they would capture the composition’s numerous subtleties. We recorded the rhythm section together at Red Rock Studios and later replaced the drum and bass tracks remotely, sending the tracks to Mark and Danny. Mark was able to record his track at his home studio and Danny at a friend's local studio. As usual, Mike Levine assembled and mixed the track with the horns, adding their parts individually.

I was looking for a Jaco Pastorius composition that had not been re-recorded on numerous occasions when I stumbled across Charlie Brent's, Rice Pudding on Jaco's "Early Years" CD (our liner notes incorrectly list Jaco Pastorius as the composer). When I first met Jaco in 1970 and began to play some of his early compositions and arrangements (ie: "Domingo" and "Killing Me Softly") his writing was heavily influenced by Charlie Brent. According to the "Early Years" CD liner notes, Charlie wrote "Rice Pudding" for a concert at Rice University as a show opener for The CC. Riders (thus the title). I felt the composition, along with Charlie's arrangement, created a snapshot of the funk style of the late 1960's and early 1970's; sort of Barney Miller (TV Sitcom Theme) meets "The Chicken". I could not locate a published lead sheet, so I had to transcribe the music from that recording. The quality of sound made the process very challenging, but the required repeated listening gave me an opportunity to extract some important elements, which I included in the arrangement. Every part on this track was recorded individually with Marko and Randy recording their tracks remotely. I think the rhythm section really captured the style with very special performances by guest bassist, Tim Smith, and great solos by Tom Lippincott (Guitar), Randy Brecker (Trumpet/Synth.), and Ed Calle (Tenor Sax).

Ron Miller’s Ruth, written for his wife, along with Wayne Shorter's "Dance Cadaverous", is one of the more sophisticated compositions in the project and a band favorite. This delicate waltz gave me a special opportunity to show-off the orchestra’s versatility. The extended introduction allowed the extensive use of woodwinds and muted brass to set the mood and to later demonstrate Ed Calle's lyricism. Ed does a magnificent job of negotiating very challenging harmonic structures. "Ruth" is one of the 4 pieces recorded with all the horns overdubbing their parts together with the exception of Ed Calle's part, which he later recorded at his home studio. The original recording included a beautiful flute solo by Ed Maina. Mike Levine and I made the difficult decision, as we had done on several of the other tracks, to shorten the recording by deleting the flute solo, to keep the track under 6 minutes and treat the piece as an Ed Calle feature.

I'll Be Seeing You closes the recording, as a tribute to our late and very dear South Florida friend and former associate, Larry Warrilow, best known for his long association with bassist, Jaco Pastorius. Originally performed in an abbreviated form for Larry’s memorial, this version has an extended introduction, which includes a delicate flute solo by Ed Maina, and an English Horn solo played beautifully by Neal Bonsanti. The recording features Rick Margitza on Tenor Sax. This is another track where each part was recorded separately and assembled and mixed by Mike Levine.